Old_ZirconThis is basically just a darker and better funded version of the John TV thing.

I bet Hansen identifies as heterosexual but is in to really hard male on male S&M and feels a lot of guilt about it.

Caminante NocturnoI don't think that applies to Hansen nearly as much as it does to people like Perverted Justice and groups like them, if at all. NBC probably didn't see this as anything more than an opportunity for a successful TV show, Hansen didn't see this as anything more than a paycheck, and I doubt anybody involved expected it to turn into the phenomenon that it did.

Perverted Justice, on the other hand, is clearly overflowing with repressed feelings and self-loathing guilt.

It's just such a spectacular shitshow, between the misleading STRANGER DANGER fearmongering, the complete misuse of police power, the Hansen grandstanding, the actual people they catch.

I just watched episode 3, and the big shocking reveal wasn't that the guy told police he'd recently had sexual contact with a 15 year old, it was that the 15 year old was a boy.

All of this is, of course, what makes it so watchable.

EvilHomerWhat gets to me is the complete lack of lawyers, and any discussion about rights.

And yeah, with the exception of that one guy Chris caught four or five times, the BIG SHOCKING REVEAL is pretty much always awful. National Guardsman has a firearm... THAT HE'S LEGALLY ENTITLED TO OWN!!! Puerto Rican hipster does thing with a child... AND THAT CHILD WAS A BOY!!! Creepy forty year-old has a pickup line... THAT'S NOT VERY GOOD!!!

I will say that this is typical Fairfield behavior, and I, for one, am glad that Mr Hanson is putting those fly-over-country savages in their place. About time someone did. But yes, as you say OZ, the show is trash, and if anything, it's getting more trash as time as goes on.

EvilHomerInternet says he's from Stratford, so yeah, I might have met him before. :(

Poor guy. I hope he can proper treatment for his stress and emotional disorders, but it's hard to get assistance once you have felony charges, especially when you've earned the sex-offender label. Being in the military he might be liable *twice* (once for the civilian courts, and again under UCMJ whenever he gets out; not sure how the CT Guard handles sex cases, so don't quote me on that), and even if his prison term isn't all that long, few of the homeless shelters and outreach programs in this area will take in sex-offenders. He's likely going to wind up being just another Bridgeport transient; his entire life fucked completely over this.

Old_ZirconI'm pretty sure in some states this would be clear cut entrapment, if I remember right that's why in the original run of the show most of the evidence gathered was inadmissible and not a single conviction resulted. I'm also pretty sure they selected locations based on which states they could get away with doing it at all.

The thing that really gets me about this stuff, as much as I can't resist watching it, is that this approach to dealing with the problem - and it is a real problem - only pushes the people involved (who are mostly the low hanging fruit who tend to not get away with anything anyway, while the really dangerous serial abusers are often pillars of the community) further to the fringes of society, where they have less social support, less to mental health care, generally less to lose and are more likely to commit worse offenses in the future. The public sex offender registry in general is problematic this way.

It's a really complicated issue with no easy answers and the way it's handled here is, of course, the worst case scenario on all levels but it's still a guilty pleasure.

EvilHomerIn case that reference is too obscure, you heard about the aftermath of the Epstein case, right OZ? The Loli Island Sex-Plane Adventure guy?

Got one charge of soliciting a prostitute, his own private wing in a prison he built, unconditional work release six days a week so that he could fly back to one of his private islands, and a party with Katy Couric and Woodie Allen after he got out on a reduce sentence.

The "prostitute" he "solicited" was thirteen or fourteen.

Dude's banged hundreds of kids over the years, maybe thousands, and who knows how many of his buddies were in on the action. Yet he's off chilling with Katie Curic and the Billinator, while this poor loser from Catch-a-Predator - PTSD-afflicted Iraq war hero, who's guilty of little more than chatting up a forty year-old pretending to be a teen - is now doomed to a life on the cold streets of Bridgeport.

RedfordPeople often talk about the rights of the children who are subjected to the potential dangers of thought crime, but few talk about the rights of those who need help for it.

Though that song suggests to me that going after barely-teens used to be kind of acceptable, just so long as it was a girl. Not exactly upstanding behavior, but not really damning either. Something like, "if God didn't want people banging babysitters, why did He make them so hot?"